Narrative - details a series of events, can be chronological or non chronological. Eg, novels, witness acocunts

Discourse structure is dependent on genre - how texts present information in order to create identities for particular individuals or institutions and the ideologies that are often inherent in these.

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Structures in Spoken Discourse

One-speaker discourse: oral narratives

Labov's narrative catergories:

When a speaker talks for an extended period, we can say that he or she is narrating. The sociolinguist Labov put forward a six part structure for oral narrative. The narrative catergories (six key categories developed by Labov which appear in a narrative):

Abstract (A) - the indication that a narrative is about to start and the speaker wants listener's attention

Orientation (O) - the 'who' 'where' 'what' and 'why.' It sets the scene and provides further contexual info for the listener.

Complicating action (CA) - the main body in narrative detail

Resolution (R) - the final events to give the narrative closure

Evaluation (EV) - additions to the basic story, to highlight attitudes or to command the listener's attention at important moments

Coda (C) - a sign the narrative is complete. This may include a return to the initial time frame before the narrative.

Narrative may not contain them all, and an EV may occur at any time.

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Evaluations

(additions to the basic story, to highlight attitudes or to command the listener's attention at important moments)

Explicative evaluation - providing reasons for narrative events ('Fred annoyed his mum, because he was very noisy')

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The analysis of conversation

Conversational analysis (CA) provides a method for lookin at multi-speaker discourse. This is largely based on the concept of the conversational turn and the basic consequence of that turn, the adjacency pair (two utterances by different speakers that have a natural/logical link), which forms an exchange structure (series of turns between speakers).

Conversations are rather straightfoward, and often speakers will insert information at various points to create a larger exchange structure. This can be in the form of a triadic structure known as initation-response-feedback (IRF) (a triadic structure in speech that allows the first speaker to feed back on the response of a second speaker). Or, an insertion sequence can be used (an additional sequence in the body of an exchange structure)

Turn taking is also a major factor - knowing when to take turns is crucial and natural in coversation. There are often points when a speaker will know they are expected to speak. Other transition relevance points (a point at which it is natural for another speaker to take turn) can occur as a consequence of natural pauses or a complete break on speech. The decision as to what gets spoken about is topic management (the control of the convo in terms of speaking/topic) and is often a result of powerful participants (hold some degree of status in a convo).